Air Pacific reaches historic agreement with flight attendants

Air Pacific and its Flight Attendants’ Union today announced that they had reached agreement on a new 5 year union contract covering the airline’s 254 flight attendants. The new 5-year contract, effective 1 December 2011, will avoid redundancies, increase flight attendant base salaries, and realign allowances and work rules to increase efficiency and productivity. In addition, flight attendants will be now eligible to earn a premium pay of 125% of their new base pay for any flying over 70 hours per month.

“I would like to thank our Cabin Crew union leaders and negotiators for their hard work and perseverance over the last eight months of negotiations. This new consensual agreement is not only fair to our flight attendants and the Company, it will also help Air Pacific return to sustained profitability and position it for success and growth in the years ahead.” said David Pflieger, Air Pacific’s Managing Director and CEO.

“Preserving current flight attendant jobs, increasing base pay, ensuring our ability to get premium pay, as well as preserving current contributions to such key benefits and allowances as healthcare insurance, layover per diem, hotel accommodations and home base transportation, were all very important priorities for us, and we are extremely pleased we were able to secure all of those items in our new contract,” said Joe McGowan, the President of the Air Pacific Flight Attendants’ Union. “In addition, for the first time in our history, we were also able to obtain guaranteed pay increases for every year of the agreement. With negotiations behind us, and our union colleagues secure in the knowledge that we all have a bright future ahead of us, we are looking forward to ensuring that Air Pacific customers continue to experience our world-renowned cabin service—a key element in helping our company transform itself into a financially stronger, more modern, and more competitive airline,” added Mr. McGowan.

“I believe the results of our negotiations are mutually beneficial because they allowed us to honour our earlier commitments regarding jobs, pay, and health care, and I am particularly pleased that our flight attendants will have the opportunity to share in any success they help create through a new profit sharing plan that was approved in principle by our Board of Directors. In addition, for the first time ever, we are also going to offer all of our flight attendants disability pay coverage for up to one year of hospitalisation or serious illness,” added Mr. Pflieger.

Mr. Pflieger added that the negotiations with the flight attendants, as well as those still underway with the Fiji Airline Pilots Association (FALPA), were a key part of the comprehensive transformation plan that Air Pacific began last year to cut costs, improve airline performance, revamp flight schedules and modernise its fleet. “Because of ever increasing fuel costs and new Low Cost Carrier competition from Australia, it is absolutely critical for us to ensure costs in every area of our business are competitive,” said Mr. Pflieger. “It was for that reason that management, all of our staff, as well as outside vendors, suppliers, and lessors were either asked to participate or they were replaced as part of the Company’s turnaround plan,” he said. Contributions from management included headcount reductions through permanent elimination of senior manager and manager positions, new requirements for management to pay 40 percent of their healthcare premiums (up from zero), the elimination of long service leave, the reduction of sick leave, capping and reductions of all annual vacation accruals, and the permanent elimination of historic allowances and benefits.

“This 5 year agreement represents a new partnership with our flight attendants in comprehensive collective efforts to ensure our mutual success. I cannot thank Joe and his team enough for their constructive and professional participation in Air Pacific’s efforts to help turn our airline around and ensure we are able to become the preferred airline in the South Pacific,” stated Mr. Pflieger.